Phishing and spear phishing continue to be lucrative enterprises for hackers. An effective strategy to prevent these attacks is a layered security approach with technical layers like hardened firewall configurations, anti-virus software, and email and web content filtering solutions. Fortunately, legitimate technology developers and support organizations are continuing to develop great technology tools to help thwart many attempted attacks. However, since an estimated 60-70% of all successful virus attacks are caused by unwitting users bypassing the technical safeguards, the most important layer of your network security is actually non-technical.
To enable a winning protection strategy, user training and regular phishing security tests of your users is critical. A phishing security test is conducted randomly by sending various emails that look legitimate to every user in your organization to see if they can be tricked by a phishing or spear phishing attack to click or provide important personal information. We not only send these out to every email address within the organizations we support, but we also send them to our own employees.
I have to say, at first, I felt a little strange about testing our employees like that – it seemed as though we didn’t trust them, that we were trying to trick them. So, after we shared the result of our first phishing attempt with our team, I polled several employees privately and asked them how they felt about being tested like that. Their feedback surprised me. Every person I talked to thought it was a good idea. They completely understood why we do it and they fully supported the program.
If you haven’t yet trained and tested your staff, you should ask your managed service provider if your program includes scheduled training and testing. Regular training followed by controlled phishing tests should be a consistent practice to ensure the safety of your organization’s network.
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June 28, 2018
As President of NetCenergy, Don Nokes is responsible for ensuring client satisfaction, and overseeing company performance and direction. Prior to co-founding the firm with Dan Charland in 2003, Don held senior leadership positions with IT service firms ranging in size from $3 Billion to $10 Million in annual sales.
Nick Eckman joined NetCenergy in 2016 from an international gaming company. Nick’s experience with supervising and implementing secure, fiber and copper wire infrastructure services provides our clients with a team of highly trained and experienced technicians. In addition to the skills required to manage our infrastructure services department, Nick brings a very experienced and focused approach to project management and is a stickler for accurate documentation for every project designed and built by his team.
Peter Lachapelle joined NetCenergy in 2015 and is responsible for leading all of NetCenergy’s operations and accounting functions. Each department within NetCenergy reports through Lachapelle. He brings his years of experience to maintain a pragmatic, efficient, client-focused team at NetCenergy. Lachapelle joined NetCenergy after completing a 27-year career with a Rhode Island, federally-charted bank which culminated in his senior management position as COO and CFO for the bank.
Peter Nelson has 25+ years of technology and management experience and has been with NetCenergy since inception. Peter serves as the VP of Engineering at NetCenergy. His role consists of managing the engineering staff, driving the companies technology strategy, and ensuring NetCenergy keeps up to date on new technologies and solutions.
As a Founding Partner, Dan is a result oriented individual who is always focusing on what is best for his client. He understands that business applications empower an organization and that technology must support those critical business applications. Dan’s technology career started in 1990 at EMC Corporation. Through the years, he has represented technology and consulting services for several organizations until 2003, when he and Don Nokes founded NetCenergy.
With decades of hands-on HR experience, Margery Ahearn is our Director of Human Resources, overseeing all hiring of new positions for NetCenergy with a careful eye on sourcing technology savvy engineers and skilled office-based professionals who fit our company culture, understand our commitment to our clients, and bring their time and talents to our team. Margery has both a BA and MBA in Business Administration from Southern New Hampshire University.